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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to retaliate for a bomb that injured an Israeli officer on the border with the Gaza Strip.

The officer was severely wounded when a bomb went off beside an army patrol along the border. He was subsequently evacuated by helicopter to hospital.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:

"Iran supported Hezbollah's terror attacks in Bulgaria; Iran is supporting terror attacks now against us in Gaza. We will fight and we will hit them very, very hard - very hard. That's the only way to fight them. The way to fight terror is to fight terror, and that we shall do with great force."

The attack came hours before the Emir of Qatar arrived in Gaza in the first visit by a head of state to the enclave since it was taken over in 2007 by the Iranian-backed Islamist Hamas movement. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the attack that an Israeli military statement said was carried out against soldiers on a "routine patrol ".